The storied halls of Maranello are currently echoing with the sound of discord, not the triumphant roar of a championship engine. The 2025 Formula 1 season, which began with the shimmering promise of a renewed challenge, has devolved into a nightmare for Scuderia Ferrari.

The final, bitter taste of this crisis was the Brazilian Grand Prix, a weekend where both Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc failed to finish the race—a public and painful capitulation that was not an anomaly, but the stark climax of a season-long systemic failure. Yet, the true source of the implosion isn’t simply the flawed machine on the track, but a catastrophic disconnect between the team’s leadership and its world-class drivers, highlighted by the recent, truly shocking public comments from Ferrari President John Elkann.

This crisis has created an atmosphere of demoralization and disbelief, fracturing the team’s morale at a time when unity is paramount. Elkann’s decision to publicly criticize his star drivers, urging them to “focus on driving and talk less” while simultaneously praising the very engineers responsible for the technical disaster, is a move that has been widely condemned as tone-deaf and fundamentally unfair.

It represents a staggering misdiagnosis of the team’s deep-rooted struggles, transforming two of the sport’s greatest talents into reluctant scapegoats for a failure born in the design office.

The Technical Tragedy of the SF25

To understand the current civil war at Ferrari, one must first confront the undeniable truth of the SF25: it is a fundamentally flawed car. Early in the 2025 development cycle, a critical and costly error was made, centered around the car’s floor design. This mistake rendered the SF25 incapable of running at the ideal ride height necessary to generate sufficient downforce. In the high-stakes world of modern Formula 1, a flaw this fundamental cascades through the entire performance package, making the car difficult to set up, unpredictable to drive, and ultimately, uncompetitive against the top teams.

Despite relentless efforts from the technical team, including numerous upgrades and new parts, the problem proved insurmountable. The car remained stubbornly temperamental, a painful reality played out on race tracks across the globe. Eventually, the team made the difficult, but necessary, decision to effectively wave a white flag on the 2025 season. They halted all further development on the SF25, freezing the aerodynamic package and diverting every available resource toward the monumental 2026 regulation reset.

While pragmatic from a resource allocation perspective, this move was, in essence, an admission of complete failure. More importantly, it left two of the best drivers in the world stranded. Hamilton and Leclerc were tasked with performing miracles in a static, uncompetitive machine, forced to watch as their rivals continued to develop and improve. This decision created an excruciating paradox: the team expected absolute motivation and silence from their drivers, even as the organization itself visibly abandoned the current campaign.

Lewis Hamilton’s Living Nightmare

For Lewis Hamilton, the 2025 season was supposed to be a triumphant new chapter in his illustrious career—the final, glorious push for a record-breaking eighth World Championship. He joined Ferrari with the express goal of injecting his championship-winning process and methodology, honed over years of dominance at Mercedes, into the Maranello structure. Instead, the seven-time world champion found himself trapped in what he has openly described as a “nightmare situation.”

With a paltry 148 points to his name, this season marks one of the absolute lowest points of Hamilton’s career. Crucially, this downturn is not attributable to any decline in his legendary driving ability, but entirely to the severe and unforgiving limitations of the SF25. The psychological toll of this struggle is immense. Hamilton is a competitor conditioned to fight for pole positions and victories, not to scrap for minor points in the midfield. His efforts to introduce structural and procedural changes have been met with frustrating slowness by a team culture resistant to rapid adaptation.

The emotional weight of a wasted opportunity cannot be overstated. Every single race this year represents a lost chance to achieve that elusive eighth title, compounding the frustration with each passing lap. Hamilton’s silence has been dignified, but the frustration is palpable, a clear indication that his faith in the team’s ability to turn things around is being severely tested.

Charles Leclerc: The Hope and the Ultimatum

In stark contrast to the team’s technical struggles, Charles Leclerc has been performing genuine heroics. The Monegasque driver has consistently extracted a level of performance from the SF25 that the car has absolutely no right to deliver. His incredible qualifying laps, often pushing the flawed machine to its very limit, are a testament to his immense, generation-defining talent. For years, Leclerc has been the hope of the Tifosi, the driver destined to bring the championship back to Maranello.

Yet, even Leclerc’s brilliance can only mask fundamental deficiencies for so long. He, too, has been vocal about his frustrations, having been repeatedly let down by a team unable to provide a consistently competitive car. His talent has often inadvertently served to obscure the true, deep-seated nature of Ferrari’s systemic issues. But the patience of the young star is visibly wearing thin.

The gravity of the current situation was underscored when Leclerc reportedly issued a stern warning to the team’s leadership. He has made it unequivocally clear that he will not tolerate another failed project, and that if the 2026 regulations do not herald a dramatic and successful turnaround, he will be compelled to look for opportunities elsewhere. This ultimatum is not a petty threat, but a calculated warning shot from a driver who knows his worth, and who refuses to waste the prime years of his career in the midfield because of chronic organizational shortcomings.

The Presidential Disconnect and Demoralization

It is in this context of driver despair and technical failure that John Elkann’s comments landed with such a shattering impact. To publicly praise the mechanics and engineers—the very individuals who designed and built the flawed SF25—while simultaneously criticizing the drivers for speaking honestly about their struggles, shows a profound and worrying disconnect from the reality on the ground.

Elkann’s narrative attempts to shift the blame from the fundamental technical failures to the human element—a superficial and demoralizing move that risks alienating the two most valuable assets the team possesses. To criticize two of the best drivers in the world for their honesty while ignoring the deep-seated issues that have prevented the team from winning a championship for almost two decades is a leadership failure of the highest order.

This corporate strategy of deflection is devastating for the team’s morale. The technical problems at Maranello are deep-rooted and systemic, a complex web of cultural stagnation and flawed methodology. They will not be solved by a superficial command to the drivers to “be quiet.” What Ferrari desperately requires is a fundamental change in its organizational culture, a willingness to honestly assess its weaknesses, and a ruthless, relentless focus on building a winning car.

The Incredibly High Stakes of 2026

The entirety of Ferrari’s immediate future now rests on the success of the 2026 project. The incoming regulation changes offer a complete reset, a golden opportunity to wipe the slate clean and finally produce a championship-capable machine. The pressure on the technical team is unprecedented, and the process is already underway, with the first chassis reportedly nearing finalization for FIA homologation.

However, the shadow of past failure is already looming. Worrying rumors have begun to emerge from Maranello, suggesting that Ferrari’s new power unit for the 2026 era could be down on power compared to the unit being developed by rivals like Mercedes. If these reports prove true, it would represent a disastrous start to the new chapter and potentially condemn Ferrari to several more years of struggling in the midfield, regardless of their aerodynamic chassis performance.

The stakes could not be higher. Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc are under contract, but speculation about their long-term commitment to a perpetually underperforming team is inevitable. The rumors of potential driver departures, though treated with caution, are a stark reflection of the deep frustration bubbling beneath the surface. The crisis is not about drivers who communicate their issues too much; it is about a team that has consistently failed to deliver on its promises for far too long. The Tifosi—Ferrari’s global, loyal, and passionate fanbase—have waited patiently for almost twenty years for a return to glory. Their patience, however, is not infinite. If Ferrari fails to deliver a competitive car in 2026, the long-lasting repercussions for the most famous name in Formula 1 could be severe, confirming that the current collapse is a systemic disease, not merely a fleeting performance issue.